Book Review: The Callahan Chronicals

Based on how often I post here, you'd think I had stopped reading and taken up some other hobby... such as drinking to excess. Incorrect!

The Thanksgiving season makes me thankful for the love of my life and the finest friends I could ask for. Without them I'd surely turn to boozy self-medication, which I'd otherwise regard as a deeply mistaken approach to problem solving.

Spider Robinson presents a sci-fi version of the place where everybody knows your name. Even if your name is Txffu Mpwfs, the world-destroying cyborg from the short story "The Guy With The Eyes". This weekend I finished the short-story collection of Mr. Robinson's: 'The Callahan Chronicals'. (I love the wrap-around cover! (Shown Here) It turns out there are only 6 characters I can't name on it. Five if the cat reaching for the cash is Pixel from Heinlein's 'The Cat Who Walks Through Walls'.)

Mr. Robinson is previously known to me peripherally as the guy who co-wrote 'Variable Star' with Robert Heinlein's ghost. Long-time readers of my blog will know that book very nearly topped the list of my favourite books of the noughties. My manager Chris gets a great big thank-you for loaning me some of Mr. Robinson's earliest books and magazines (including early printings of the Hugo winning Telempath and Stardancer stories). But Spider Robinson is arguably most famous for Callahan's Place, which spawned great fan love online as the Interwebs were first being spun, and that love continues today. The Place is the kindest, most psychologically sympathetic bar you've ever heard of. At Callahan's the wretched and the weird discover 'shared pain is lessened, shared joy is increased'. I appreciate the bad jokes and the good intentions. This is some darn fine writing. I'm looking forward to continuing the series.

Oh, and if you have just under 4 minutes, here's Author/Music Man Spider Robinson performing his own The Drunkard's Song.

Book Review: STAR WARS A New Dawn

So! The Disney Corporation swallowed the Star Wars and Marvel film franchises whole- and all I got was this Darth Vader digital watch. But what else can I do? NOT watch all the stuff I like? There's every probability that the good folks at Disney can throw money and talent at things until they're good again. (Speaking of which, I don't remember why I didn't like Disney in the first place- ever seen 'Phineas and Ferb'? It's pretty great.)

Where was I? Yes. I had a great time watching 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars' and I have every expectation that I'll enjoy 'Star Wars: Rebels' this October. To that end, I borrowed 'Star Wars: A New Dawn' as a preview. This novel features an Evil Empire getting a foothold and beginning to seriously creep people out (about 8 years after Palpatine took the reins and everybody seemed o.k. with it- except for all those Jedi jerks he shot in the back to preserve the peace).

Hera Syndulla is a clever woman with a plan to put things right, and Kanan Jarrus is a tough guy who would rather nobody noticed him (just in case tough guys raised in religions starting with "J" are still being singled out as rancor chow). With the aid of a disgruntled Imperial snoop called Zaluna (a Sullustan who's easily my favourite character here), they team up with a paranoid explosives expert to break Murdock out of the asylum again and stop the crazy murdering middle-management cyborg Vidian before he shatters a moon in the name of efficiency.

Much praise to author John Jackson Miller. To be completely candid, I enjoyed Miller's 'Kenobi' more but the difference between 5 stars and 4 stars is only the difference between 'awesome' and 'really good'.

Also I see on his website that Mr. Miller wrote a Star Trek book, I should really check that out sometime, too.

Book Review: DOCTOR WHO Engines of War

Aww, yeah! I've been looking forward to a novel about the Last Great Time War since I first heard of it in 2005. What's the Last Great Time War, you ask? This probably isn't the blog for you! But, in a nutshell, it's the fictional many-fronted final genocidal planet-cracking time-warping battle to extinction between the mighty Time Lords and the hate-spewing Daleks.

Now with John Hurt!

I pre-ordered this book the very minute I saw the cover back in July. It arrived Monday. And I finished it just now. It takes place "4 centuries" into the Time War, one century into the unofficial ninth life of the Time Lord "renegade" formerly known as The Doctor, and shortly before the TV episode "The Day of The Doctor".

It's the story of Cinder, a girl from planet Moldox, a beautiful world fallen long since beneath the hovering heels of the cyborg Daleks. And it's the story of the choices of the crusty old alien Cinder teams up with to prevent the alternative reality mutants known as Skaro Degradations from their latest scheme to erase all other forms of life. With his own people willing to go to appalling lengths to end the war, our hero has no moral high ground and only his feelings to guide him. Especially his crustiness.

Author George Mann has a real ear for the dialogue of Doctor Who, and a ripping good action yarn it turned out to be. No complaints from me- this is a story with a cannon made out of moons!

So read it already!

Tales of Trenzalore

Despite the cool cast and premise I don't have it in me to pay much further attention to SyFy's "Battledogs", so instead you get a semi-spoilery book review of "Tales of Trenzalore: The Eleventh Doctor's Last Stand". Aren't you lucky?

I'm actually MOST excited about the "Eighth" Season of Doctor Who which premiered two days ago... but you may not have seen it yet. Thus... this.

It's four short stories about the town called Christmas on the planet Trenzalore: a low-tech land of perpetual snow and darkness with pleasant inhabitants. (Not unlike Canada, really.) Trenzalore has been under siege for nine centuries, yet remains steadfastly defended from alien invaders by an alien invader called the Doctor.

Each anecdote is worthwhile, quick jaunts in the impossible life of the 1500-year-old Time Lord forced by conscience and circumstance to defend everyone with his wits. In these specific cases, defending them with the added hobbling of a wooden leg, encroaching bodily decrepitude, and a Truth Field that demands total honesty.

Justin Richard's 'Let it Snow' provides a heart-warming story of frozen Martians and avalanche. 'The Dreaming' by Mark Morris offers the mental menace of the Mara. Paul Finch brings an explosive tale of tundra and plastic bullies in 'Strangers in The Outland'. My favourite was 'An Apple A Day' by George Mann. It features the carnivorous avocado known as the Krynoid, whose origin story 'The Seeds of Doom' from 1976 was, for me, most memorably horrifying.

Second item of good news for me: George Mann is the author of 'Engines of War', a Doctor Who novel I ordered a month ago sight unseen. I'm pretty much bound to love it!

38th Birthday- All The Present I Need

Life is so full of hurry and hustle 
Sometimes I think it's passing us by 
The days are like hours, hours like minutes 
I'm caught up in it till I look in your eyes 
And to my surprise I find there is a heaven 
Timeless and real, making me feel 
Free and alive 

You touch me, you kiss me, and time has no meaning 
I'm on a rocket to some other zone 
Baby, you thrill me - whatever you're doing 
Don't think of stopping until we are light-years away 
All alone, cause I want to keep this 
Treasure for my very own 
Your talent for love 

Lyrics by Lorraine Feather (?)

R.I.P. Robin Williams

Alien, madman, genie, father, robot, drunken sailor, clown, human wreckage, king of the moon.

When my wife told me last night that we lost Robin Williams, the news felt like a quick punch in the chest.

He's been in our entertainment lives since we first became mesmerized by dancing colours on screens. He was the soul of my 52nd & 89th favourite movies (Disney's Aladdin & Bicentennial Man). As a dramatic actor, he showed me about being human. As a comic, he taught us that everything was mockable- "Humour. Ark! Ark! What a concept."

We're going to miss him, and this is going to hurt for a while. Shazbot.

Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy

I've been looking forward to the Guardians of the Galaxy movie all year. and yesterday I found nothing to disappoint! High praise, really, whenever I get my hopes up about such events they tend to collapse pretty easily. (I'm looking at you, Disney's John Carter. Not literally looking at you, that would require watching you again.)

The characters are splendid. Our villains are creeps of the first order, our heroes are a fun bunch of ne'er-do-wells, who deep, deep, DEEP down, would rather be Er-Do-Wells. Excellent renderings & voices of the horrible/adorable Groot and Rocket (first seen in broad Xandarian triple-daylight) make it very easy to buy into their brand of hyper-reality. Drax, Gamora, and Star-Lord are awesome, just totally spot-on. This is very much the sort of all-outer-space all-the-time action I was wishing for with the live-action Green Lantern movie. (I don't want every comment I make to be bashing something else, but GOTG has quickly become one of my hundred favourites. Sorry, Speed Racer, my former #100, you're probably back on the second-stringers list...)

The sense of humour, way-groovy soundtrack, and whiz-bang big-badda-booms make for an utterly ideal summer flick to enjoy with friends. A cynical heart in just the right place. Maybe you should see it twice before you buy the Blu-Ray! Just sayin'.

I'd like to think the takeaway here is twofold: "Nobody is 100% a dick." and "Life's giving us a chance to give a shit."